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Topic Review (Newest First)

02-22-2014 04:30 PM

l8nite

Been a long time since I've posted, but just a quick note to say I'm still alive

We bought a new house - so I'm currently researching how to move my tank...

04-09-2013 04:31 PM

MABJ

HANdS 110G High Tech Community

Quote:

Originally Posted by l8nite

Thanks, he was dead this morning. I didn't see anything obviously wrong that would indicate bacteria (no fin clamping, redness, swollen abdomen, etc.). I tested the water and everything was nominal =/

Maybe just old age... they were full-grown when I bought them from my LFS, and I don't know how long the previous owner had them prior.

Oh well.

That's just too bad hmm.

04-09-2013 04:28 PM

l8nite

Thanks, he was dead this morning. I didn't see anything obviously wrong that would indicate bacteria (no fin clamping, redness, swollen abdomen, etc.). I tested the water and everything was nominal =/

Maybe just old age... they were full-grown when I bought them from my LFS, and I don't know how long the previous owner had them prior.

Oh well.

04-09-2013 01:51 PM

MABJ

HANdS 110G High Tech Community

Quote:

Originally Posted by l8nite

My tank is having a tough week. My breeding pair of mollies both jumped out of the tank and died within days of one another. I suspect my redtail shark chased them out. And today one of my angel fish is laying on his side on the bottom of the tank . I moved him to a quarantine tank, but I'm not sure how to proceed. He doesn't look good.

Hmm this is a 110, so we can rule overstocking out, I bet you've got other issues. Test ammonia and nitrates, also look for signs of a bacterial infection..

04-09-2013 07:53 AM

l8nite

HANdS 110G High Tech Community

My tank is having a tough week. My breeding pair of mollies both jumped out of the tank and died within days of one another. I suspect my redtail shark chased them out. And today one of my angel fish is laying on his side on the bottom of the tank . I moved him to a quarantine tank, but I'm not sure how to proceed. He doesn't look good.

03-16-2013 10:23 AM

l8nite

Been a long time since I've updated - I've pretty much been neglecting this tank beyond my water change each weekend. Some of my plants have broken the surface, and I need to seriously trim the sagitarria in the front, because some of it is almost 12" tall now (!).

One thing I did do was take off another canister filter (bringing me down to just the Eheim 2217) and installed 2 Koralia Nano 425s for flow instead. It seems like my plants and fish like the change quite a bit.

I've also planted a bunch of other random plants in there I've received lately from RAOKs or what-not. I got some bucephelandra, not sure what sp. that I'm hoping will grow well.

02-25-2013 09:56 AM

l8nite

I removed the center three pieces of driftwood from this tank... more room for plants!

The only driftwood I kept in there were pieces which had Anubias firmly attached to them. I think eventually I'm going to re-scape and mostly do an open-field kind of look with the sag for about 60-70% of the tank. The cabomba furcata reminds me of the trees from "The Lorax" - I thought it might be kind of fun to have them planted at intervals within the "field" of sag.

Of course, that means I need to re-locate most of the stems on the right side ... I have some beautiful huge crypt wendtii and ciliata back there in that corner that you can't even see anymore.

02-05-2013 11:07 PM

l8nite

Quote:

Originally Posted by dj2005

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed all of your journals. Keep the updates coming!

Thanks! Just a quick update. I started keeping a powerpoint containing slides of my plants & their names, to help me with remembering them. I'm getting better, but I still struggle with some of the Rotala, Ludwigia, and Hygrophila species.

I planted a TON of new plants over the past week, thanks to some great RAOKs that I received. My Cabomba Furcata which was originally a 4" stem has turned into 4 stems, each about 6" tall now and growing an inch or more per day... I want to plant a whole forest of them on the right side of my tank. I moved all the hygrophila species over to the left side of the tank too. To make room for plants I had to remove some smaller hardscape that was getting lost in there anyway

I also ordered some new mosses which I plan to set up in a moss-only nano tank soon.

I updated the FTS at the top of the thread, and once things recover from my disruption, I'll post some good pictures of the new plants

02-05-2013 10:13 PM

dj2005

I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed all of your journals. Keep the updates coming!

01-26-2013 08:19 AM

l8nite

HANdS 110G High Tech Community

Quote:

Originally Posted by MABJ

sorry bout the damage.. But really. So beautiful.

A ton of people would pay out the butt to have their tanks look like this. Especially such a well planted large tank.

Keep it up.

Thanks for the kind words!

01-26-2013 06:29 AM

MABJ

HANdS 110G High Tech Community

sorry bout the damage.. But really. So beautiful.

A ton of people would pay out the butt to have their tanks look like this. Especially such a well planted large tank.

Keep it up.

01-26-2013 05:56 AM

l8nite

Updated FTS:

My Cabomba Furcata wants to be the first stem plant to the surface:

Some of the battle damage from spilling my bottle of Excel into the tank (the worst of the leaves have been trimmed):

01-26-2013 04:15 AM

l8nite

I feel terrible. I was getting ready to replace the impeller on my Fluval 405 (was making an awful noise), when I saw this (on the intake line to my Eheim 2217):

For the past 7 days or so I have been wondering what happened to 2 of the 3 baby otocinclus that I added... yes, that is one of them in the tube. He actually didn't seem too bothered. Apparently there was enough algae in that tube, plus space for him to turn around, that he quite handily moved about in the tubing.

Then, I noticed that I was missing one of my guppies... so I decided to pull the whole canister out, remove all the filter media and lo and behold, at the bottom of the canister is one of my guppies (his fins are a little shredded, but he is swimming regularly at the moment) and the other Otocinclus too!

The second rescue-cinclus is in pretty poor shape. He is clearly famished and not too active... I don't know if he'll survive or not.

Here he is, looking rather meager:

Finally, as I was sorting through the ceramic-ring media in the lowest compartment of my filter, I saw something else moving... then another thing... then another. There were 4 Molly fry in there too! That makes 14 in the containment unit (10G tank) now... plus, I'm not sure how many were eaten by my angelfish before I started rescuing them.

The cause of all this mayhem? I completely forgot that I cut a couple of the grills off the intake-cover in order to put my CO2 tubing in there. When I turned the CO2 way up to help fight the BBA, it was causing my Eheim 2217 to belch and so I removed the tubing from the intake cover, but never patched up the hole :-/

Sigh.

I posted about this in a separate thread, but I accidentally spilled about 150ml of Flourish Excel into my tank last Sunday during my normal maintenance window. To make it worse, I only had about 30% of the water volume in there when it happened. A bunch of my plants were injured or killed. After several large water changes, things are under control again now, and I'm just waiting for some new growth to pick up and help fill in the damage.

Double Sigh.

School started this week, so my time for working on the tank is going to be limited to mostly a few hours on the weekend.

Triple sigh.

Other things that I've done in the past week or so:
- Planted most of the new plants I got from SFBAAPS. No scape, just stuck them in wherever I saw a bare spot of substrate until they grow up a little.

- Removed 3 big pieces of driftwood in an attempt to open up the tank a little for more plant growth

- Removed and treated (H2O2) some of the larger Anubias that had BBA on them.

- Set up the 10G fry containment unit and transferred some plants/wood/filter material/etc., there. I'll resurrect the tank journal for that tank this weekend.

- Cleaned my canister filters and and fixed the impeller on the 405

- Built and tested a CO2 reactor. It failed (leaks). I have an idea for a very simple in-tank reactor that I want to try before I try fixing the one I built.

Mostly heartache this week :-/

I think that catches me up to today.

Today, I did a bunch of filter maintenance. After reading a thread about running a tank without a filter, I started day-dreaming about noise-reduction, and so I shut down the Fluval 403 (1 of 3 canisters I had running...) and removed it entirely.

I also removed about 2/3 of the media in the other two canisters (2217 and 405) leaving one tray of ceramic rings and then the large sponges for mechanical filtration in the 2217 and only sponges in the 405.

I should be receiving some Koralia nano 425 powerheads early next week, and once I receive those I might even shut down the Fluval 405 too, leaving me with only the Eheim 2217.

I was supposed to receive my new lights (2x 48" Finnex Ray 2 DS) today, but they haven't shown up yet and my tracking # doesn't show any change in status.

01-22-2013 08:45 PM

l8nite

Thanks! I'll try and take some more full-tank shots this weekend. Things have changed a bit, as I went to the SFBAAPS meetup and received like 16 more species of plants

New plants, some of these I didn't add to the 110G (the Frogbit went in my 2G and 5G, the Guppy Grass and Cryptocoryne Hudoroi) went in my 10G

A. Frogbit

B. Rotala (from Nevada Hot Springs)

C. Flame Moss

D. Guppy Grass

E. Myriophyllum Mattogrosensis

F. Hygrophylla Polysperma 'Tropica Sunset'

G. (Rotala wallichii)?

H. Cabomba sp.?

I. Limnophylla Aromatica

J. Ludwigia verticillata (either Cuba or Pantanal)

K. Ludwigia Arcuata 'Needle Leaf' (tissue-cultured)

L. ?

M. Rotala (rotundifolia perhaps)

N. ?

O. Cryptocoryne Hudoroi

P. Jungle Valisneria

01-22-2013 07:48 PM

JerSaint

Tank looks awesome! I like setup, can't wait to see it grow.

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